ARGYROPOULOS, JOHN. - Byzantine humanist, b. in Constantinople around 1415, d. in Rome on June 26, 1487; he was one of the principal architects of the Italian Renaissance of the 15th century. According to the historian Doukas (Historia byzantina: PG 157, 1010), he was part of the retinue of the emperor John VII Palaiologos at the Council of Florence (1437-39). Perhaps from this period dates his full adherence to the Roman Church, of which we have irrefutable testimony in a letter addressed to Pope Nicholas V in 1448, published by S. Lampros ('Αρχιγραμμύλας, Athens 1910, pp. 136-37).
Like many of his Greek contemporaries, John had a very active life. Having returned to the East after the Council of Florence, he came again to Italy, to Padua, where he studied and taught at the same time, for three years (1441-44); he taught in Constantinople between the years 1444-52; he made a brief stay in Rome in 1448, and composed, undoubtedly on this occasion, his small Treatise on the Procession of the Holy Spirit (cf. L. Allatius, Graeciae orthodoxae script., I, Rome 1652, pp. 400-18 and PG 158, 992-1008). After the capture of Constantinople by the Turks, between 1453 and 1457, he traveled in Greece, in Italy, in France, and also in England. Finally, in 1457, he was appointed professor of philosophy at the Studio of Florence, where he translated into Latin and commented on the works of Aristotle. He was careful not to involve himself too directly in the question between Platonists and Aristotelians, and he praised the two great Greek philosophers equally. In 1471 he left Florence for Rome, certainly counting on the favor of his old fellow disciple from Padua, Francesco della Rovere, who would later be appointed pope under the name of Sixtus IV. The Pope gave him the best welcome, but did not make either him or his Roman pupils rich. The death of Bessarion (1472) was a disaster for him; he wished to return to Florence, but the Florentines preferred Chalcondyles to him. Nevertheless, in 1477, he took refuge, for four years (1477-81), at the Florentine Studio, alongside Chalcondyles. In 1481 he again abandoned Florence for Rome, where he died a few years later, almost in poverty (cf. G. Mercati, Minuzie, in Bessarione, 24 (1910), pp. 145-46).
A. was above all a professor and wrote little: besides the little treatise, noted above, he left: 1) Latin translations of most of the works of Aristotle, which have had numerous editions: the translation of Porphyry's Isagoge and that of St. Basil's Hexaemeron, likewise published several times; 2) several oratorical writings, published recently by S. Lampros (op. cit., pp. 1-67, 129-41); 3) four little treatises, the first on various questions, the second on exercises in rhetoric, the third on the forms of syllogism, the fourth on dialectic; published by Lampros (op. cit., pp. 142-86), except the last, discovered by G. Cammelli; 4) prefaces and inaugural speeches (Prolusiones) to his Florentine verses; 5) seventeen letters, published by various authors in various collections.
As for his personality, his enemies described him as a lover of good food and have him die of an indigestion of lemons. One must be wary of these judgments, as also of the hyperbolic praises that his admirers have given him. His friend Filelfo tells us of his bizarre and inconstant character; this is sufficiently attested by the vicissitudes of his life.